


Dr. Half-Pint's Lepid Ratio of 1:12

by benryxenry (phlyaros)



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: (Probably) Not a Slowburn, Alien Biology, Alien/Alternate Universe Gordon Freeman, Developing Relationship, Eldritch Benry, Eldritch Tommy Coolatta, G/T, I put warnings in the top note bc most chapters won't be like that, Injury Recovery, Interspecies Relationship(s), Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-ResCas, Size Difference, Tommy and Benry are already friends :)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26151340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phlyaros/pseuds/benryxenry
Summary: Gordon knew he should have left after being spotted the first time, but the tall one hadn't seemed concerned about the encounter, nor had they gone looking for Gordon, so what harm was there in sticking around just a bit longer? He had books to try and get his hands on, curiosities about the various humans (all visitors, the tall one not) to satiate, outside weather to avoid!...That, and he didn't really know where else hewouldgo.
Relationships: Benry & Tommy Coolatta, Benry/Tommy Coolatta/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 12
Kudos: 110





	Dr. Half-Pint's Lepid Ratio of 1:12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy meets his roommate. Gordon gets hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA! I'm preemptively putting this here because I already have some fun and funky things planned and I do NOT want to be misinterpreted: Please do not view this as a sexual fic or associate it with sexual content! It isn't intended to be so, nor do I view it's current or future content in that way! Content in this fic is not and never will be written with horny intent, you hear me? YOU HEAR ME???
> 
> Alright, good. Enjoy <3
> 
> WARNINGS: Blood, Unspecified Limb Injury, Vaguely Mentioned Missing Limb, Somewhat Long Fall

The tall one was reading in the living room again.

Well, the tall _er_ one. All of the - the word was 'human,' right? - all of the humans were extraordinarily large compared to Gordon. They all towered over him like particularly old trees, but the tall one dwarfed their fellow humans as well. Thus, the name. He hadn’t been surprised at all that their living space was enormous as well. The fabrics, the wood, even the paint - the whole space was bizarre, given larger textures and extra surface that their smaller counterparts lacked.

Said changes certainly made climbing easy for someone his size, but as could be expected of anyone who'd been ripped from their reality and thrust into another same-but-different one, he’d had a really rough adjustment period. Gordon wasn’t sure if how he felt about accidentally wandering into Giants-R-Us would count as culture shock, but it certainly was like it. Honeymoon period and everything. Hell, he was still in the honeymoon phase. Who could blame him? He’d wandered into Giantland somehow, and no way in hell was he going to let the universe screw him over like that without demanding a few answers with star-struck eyes first.

Well, really, he couldn't demand the answers. Just make observations, hypotheses, algorithms, read whatever the tall one occasionally happened to leave open and out, anything to keep himself busy and keep the static out of his head and keep his head on his shoulders.

Regardless, he'd thought he was coping with it all pretty well, up until he found out just how much bigger fruits were here. An innocuous thing, really, but even the fruit felt strange and foreign to him. Similar, but immense and wrong, like someone tried to make each and every fruit with only a vague description. He was pretty sure the sweet-smelling red berry didn’t even translate to anything back home that Gordon could think of.

He may have had a mini-breakdown over being smaller than the ‘bananas’ (he was _not_ going to acknowledge those abominations as actual fruit) when he found them for the first time. 

He just wished he had someone to talk to about it. This place was terrifying, with its general larger-than-lifeness and everything being so same but different, but the scientist in him made it feel so enthralling. Even if he could leave, he wasn’t sure if he even would have just yet. Again, honeymoon period. 

_Get back on topic, Gordon. Gesticulating to yourself wildly in the dark is not the look you want to have._ Gordon began to run his fingers through his fur, fingers curled to avoid piercing the skin. Focus. _Human was reading in the living room._

_Human._

Something in him said to avoid the humans. Probably the logical side of him, because they were easily twelve times his size and had casual displays of strength on a daily basis, and for as long as he’d been here he’d listened. Unfortunately for logic, Gordon had found one hell of a curious streak in him during his time here, and admittedly may have gotten a bit stir-crazy. Who would have guessed not being able to fly or climb for fear of being seen would make him get so restless? So desperate for information to soak in, to make some sense of his surroundings?

So when he found out that humans also make and, you know, _read_ books, he just had to know more. He wasn’t just making excuses to get a closer look. One-hundred-percent interested in the book.

Which led to why he’d been on the lookout for when the tall one would read. He couldn’t see the title from here, his goggles just a little too scratched up to give a clear image anymore, but the title didn’t really matter. Well, okay. It mattered enough to try slanting the lenses to get a better view, but that didn’t work.

Gordon choked down a swell of anxiety he felt at the sight of the tall one’s animal companion - a ‘Sunkist’, if he remembered correctly - but the Sunkist was preoccupied with the tall one, her head on their lap with her eyes closed as they occasionally turned a page.

They both seemed peaceful. Relaxed. _Must be nice to sit out in the open like that and feel safe,_ Gordon thought, trying desperately to steer away from the thought that humans were probably some manner of predator. The tall one had those noisemakers in their ears that made things too loud for them to hear the Bijou walking around, which was pretty good luck since he would be getting a little too close for comfort to try and read the book. Gordon was almost certain that humans didn’t call them noisemakers, but he didn’t know what they _did_ call them, so name-by-function it was. They seemed to help the tall one sometimes, when the white noises of the house were getting a bit much for even him. The other humans weren’t nearly as observant about sounds. Minus the one incident, he’d actually gotten some pretty close calls that would have gotten him caught if the humans had stopped to listen.

Gordon really didn’t know what was up with this human’s intense sense of hearing, though. The previous tenant had never heard him talking to himself in the first days, and this one shows up just after they scrambled off and just hears everything? Terrible. Nerve-wracking. Gordon had been so worried about staying quiet and hidden he was pretty sure if he tried to talk now he’d be sore afterwards. Ultimately, he’d chalked up the conclusion that humans were weird and probably extremely varied, though he only had seen a few so far (and that was quite enough, thank you. Arms should _never_ be able to stretch that far.)

He’d had enough time here to realize he was alone. No need for speaking out loud. No matter how much he wanted to.

Getting down to business, Gordon circled around the back of the couch. Didn’t want to be on the same side of it as the ‘Sunkist’, or be in the human’s direct line of sight. Climbing the fabric of the couch would’ve been easy, even though he was down a hand. Thanks, universe, for three other hands plus two wing-thumbs as backups!

Using his claws to latch onto the fabric, Gordon began to bear-crawl up the back of the couch, moving slowly so as to not alert the giant. The fabric leaned to his weight, and the mock falling sensation made him sick to his stomach. He took a moment to breathe and calm down before continuing upwards. Throwing himself over the top, he landed with a soft _oof_ on the plush back cushion, and quickly froze. The tall one shifted in place ever-so-slightly, moving the book closer to their face after a quick stretch accompanied by a quiet and content grunt. Gordon didn’t dare move until they settled back into place, holding his breath and praying they couldn’t hear his heart pounding under his ribs. 

Interestingly, the Sunkist was no longer resting on the tall one’s lap. He couldn’t see where she’d gone, but she likely wasn’t far from them. The two were never apart for long. 

Standing up, he noted that the vantage point allowed him to look at the text in their hands, at their giant thumbs curled onto the pages, at their relaxed and happy expression. At the little details on their peach-fuzz covered face that made them look like they were glowing in the sunlight.

... Or were they actually glowing? Gordon couldn’t tell.

The tall one’s breathing sounded slow and steady, and they seemed fairly content with whatever it was they were reading. At a glance, Gordon couldn’t decipher any of it with the combination of scuffed up lenses and just not knowing a decent portion of the words. His eyes slowly drifted back up to the human, trailing up their lanky arms to the shoulder, then the neck and face.

Humans looked different up close.

He could clearly see the veins under the human’s skin, the texture on the surface. The human’s face was wrinkled in places - particularly around the eyes and nose - and he could see the little ridges in their ears, the peach fuzz over said ridges, the light scattered in their big, pretty, relaxed eyes. If he had to venture a guess, if humans even followed the same rules as him, he’d say the tall one was in his thirties or so. 

Gordon looked at his hand, curling and uncurling his fingers, and moved his little finger closer to the other three. He looked back up at the human’s hand, structure now visually much the same, minus the extra padding and the claws.

It felt… Strange, that humans looked so much like Bijoux. Gordon wasn't really a natural science type, never was, but-

Gordon was ripped out of his thoughts as the human suddenly threw their arm to their face and sneezed loud enough to deafen him.

Startled, Gordon leaped back, wings flared reflexively. The human noticed the movement almost instantly, and turned their gaze to him, before leaning away, their eyes wide and mouth agape. They quickly removed the noisemakers from their ears, holding the two cords in their hands as they sat and stared at him with a perplexed look on their face.

And stared at him, longer and longer, time stretching thin and taught with how long the seconds felt with those large eyes pointed right at him.

Gordon suddenly didn’t like their eyes as much. The dead-on stare was something he shared with them, sure, but they were much, much bigger than he was. They clearly were contemplating, analyzing, like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, or maybe thinking of what to do. It was unnerving at best, and holy _fuck_ those face-sized teeth didn’t help his nerves.

Gordon, perhaps morbidly, wondered what they were thinking.

Tommy was completely and utterly baffled at the sight in front of him.

He’d always been good with biology - he’d made Sunkist, after all - and the 5(6?)-inch tall person standing in front of him was hitting the key notes of some exceedingly different groups of animals that just couldn’t have converged together naturally.

Unless, of course, they did converge naturally, just not _here_. The resonance cascade was still very much an unknown, no matter however long ago it was.

The bat-like wings (an important distinction, he could already see a big structural difference. Wait, wait, were those _palms?_ ) paired with a tail that was almost certainly prehensile, if that frightened curling and whipping had anything to say about it, particularly caught his eye in the biological mismatch department. And those were just the obvious things! The reddish-brown fur peppered with grey paired with the orange portions of the wings was just plain _pretty_. With so much detail was packed into so little space, Tommy just wanted to just sit and soak it in. Maybe write down everything he could on a dinky little notepad barely held steady as he scribbled away with a ball-point pen.

Then he realized he’d been staring. The tiny stranger was looking right back at him with their terrified little eyes under some actually… fairly sophisticated-looking goggles. Did they need vision correction? They seemed to know how long they’d been standing there as well, and their limbs twitched, like they wanted to run. Tommy opened his mouth to say something, a greeting or an acknowledgment or something to keep them from panicking… 

… but then they practically flung themselves off the back of the couch, flying to the floor like a rocket that was built with the engine on the wrong end. He spun around to see them, his arms now hanging over the back of the couch. Tommy winced as they made impact with the floor, a painful-sounding crack emanating from underneath them. He could only hope it wasn’t a wing, with that already-missing right arm of theirs having another limb down would definitely prove a handicap sooner or later.

They, however, were rather determined to prove Tommy wrong. They’d gotten halfway across the room, little dribbles of blood falling off of them as they scuttled away. Tommy managed to strangle out a ‘wha- wait!’, reaching out towards them as he too began to scramble off of the couch, consequently getting tangled in the blanket he’d previously wrapped himself in.

He stumbled as he began to unravel himself, the book falling to the floor with a subtle thud. He quickly glanced to see if he was close to stepping on Sunkist, but she'd already moved aside to let Tommy up. After a bit of fumbling he had freed himself from his blanket cocoon, but when his eyes darted back to where the tiny stranger was last, they'd already vanished altogether.

Tommy’s wide-eyed stare fell to the last place he’d seen them, and slowly traced back to where they’d fallen. Sure enough, there was a visible crack in the wood where they’d made impact. He wrung his hands together, a pang of guilt threatening his composure. If he had spoken faster, if he hadn’t hesitated for so long…

He sighed, reluctantly. The chance that they’d be able to get away with doing whatever they’d been doing with that new injury tacked on to their arm situation was slim. Moreso with their exposure so close to him, since it seemed they weren’t acclimated to being around humans (well, close enough, in his case). The thought of it felt like a ton of bricks getting stacked onto his shoulders, one by one increasing the weight until he realized he'd slumped back onto the couch at some point.

Tommy mulled over the information - They were hurt, possibly exposed to pathogens they weren’t used to, probably not even from this planet, and clearly scared. Of him.

_Ouch._ Saying it felt a bit worse than just knowing. Nobody'd ever really... been flat-out afraid of him. Intimidated, maybe, but not much more than that.

Tommy rubbed the nape of his neck, blanket now half slung on the floor, chest heavy, a crestfallen look on his face as he stared into nothing. Sunkist bumped her head against his hand affectionately in the way that dogs do, and Tommy hummed, absently running his fingers through her soft, hay-colored fur as he tried to steady his thoughts.

"You're right," Tommy smiled, "I can- we can- there's gonna be something I can do. Later. It'll… it'll be okay."

Sunkist just gave a content dog-smile and looked up at Tommy with her big brown eyes and _boofed_ softly.

They were made of tougher stuff, if they survived the (in hindsight, excessive for their size) velocity of that fall, and had even dealt with being around long enough to get more curious than they were scared, if only briefly. They’d come back, if they had to.

Gordon, hidden in the cave-like safety of the walls, struggled to breathe through the tight ache of anxiety filling his chest, one bloodied wing clutched gently in his hands as he fought back tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. This is my first Real Fic EVER (I mean I've made like a billion fic outlines but I never,,, wrote or posted them) so this is. me sticking my toes in the water so to speak. hello fandom please don't bite. thanks  
> Constructive criticism welcome! General commentary also welcomed, I _love_ to see how others interpret writing and their ideas about it!!! I almost never come to the same conclusion naturally, it's just so interesting to read other's thoughts.
> 
> Decided to call Gordon's weird alternate 'humans' species Bijou for now because it means small/jewel and Humans are named after an archaic form of "Earth" so makes sense 2 me, Bijoux are small and from the earth :) if I change my mind on that I'll go back and change it/say so in the notes.  
>   
> No promises on update speed because I nitpicked about this chapter for like 2 weeks, but I have Goals that I will not specify on update time  
> Anyway uuuhhh Gordon is just,, ,a leetol creeture... thatse it... he cannot change this


End file.
